Red Room Where the Writers Are

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I’ve been procrastinating on writing a Bert Bauer blog.  Well, that’s not really true.  I wrote a 1,200-word blog about Bert last week. Only I didn’t save it correctly; when it didn’t appear in My Documents, I started to rock back and forth for a bit and wanted to bang my head on the wall. I knew I had to write it again, yet I resisted. After a while, I figured out why.

It was my grandmother who loved Guiding Light. I had memories of her watching her shows with the green Kools carton near her chair, smoking and watching.  I sat down and watched the show with her, and we would discuss the characters. My grandmother loved Bert. Bert was like her: no nonsense, practical.  I always loved Bert’s living room; it was warm yellow and it was like Bert: warm, friendly, no nonsense. It’s no coincidence that, when she and I moved in a house a couple of years ago and we could paint the living room, my mother and I decided on a warm yellow.

It wasn’t a surprise that I would come to love Bert as well. She was so much like my grandmother—both of them helped raise their grandchildren,  and both had a sympathetic ear and a cup of coffee for anyone who needed it.  They were women of their generation: married young, and had children young as well. (Bert’s sons did go through “Soap Opera Rapid-Aging Syndrome” while Grandma’s kids just got older the old-fashioned way.) They were handsome women, sturdy women. 

Then, in 1980 my grandmother died of lung cancer. I knew it was going to happen—my mother prepared me for it.  However, Guiding Light was still on at two in the afternoon.  I could still go into Bert’s living room while she gave advice and worried about her boys, her stepdaughter Hilary, and her grandchildren. The presence of Bert gave me so much comfort through the years.

Bert didn’t start out the warm lady I watched as a child. In 1947, while it was still a radio drama, Irna Phillips decided to revamp The Guiding Light and center it on a German American family, the Bauers. There was Mama and Papa Bauer, and their three children: Trudy, Meta, and Bill.  Sometimes the children’s new American values clashed with the old world values of Mama and Papa, but they always loved each other. Soon Bill started dating Bert Miller, a girl from a prominent family. At first the role was voiced by Ann Shepherd, but she was soon replaced by another actress. She had luck on her side because she had the same last name as the Bauers, and her first name was Charita.

Charita Bauer had been on the radio for years. According to Christopher Schemering’s book Guiding Light: a Golden Anniversary: Bauer was on radio shows Let’s Pretend and Maudie before she was Bert.

She did the radio show for a couple of years, and when it was time to transition to television, she did both for several years. Bert at first was spoiled and bratty. Her husband had to have a better job, and by God, they’d better not live with Mama and Papa Bauer forever. In this short transcript, Bert complains to Papa Bauer about Bill and her sister in law Meta:

Bert: Papa Bauer, I can’t believe this headline! Daughter of Meta White held on suspicion of murder! They don’t say why! One, two, three pages not about Kathy but about Meta!
Papa B: Oh, Berta, I just don’t know… My head is going around and around…
Bert: I warned Meta.  I warned her not to believe Kathy’s story.
Papa B: You don’t think that Kathy…Oh, that can’t be.

Bert: Oh, but Papa Bauer they don’t lock up people for no reason at all!
Papa B: What does it say in the paper?
Bert: What does it say? It says nothing…
Papa B: So what can we do? You can’t change it, I can’t change it.
Bert: What is it going to do for all of us? Seems like only yesterday Meta was on trial, almost four years ago.  Oh, I can remember it so well. Walking in the stores, people whispering, looking at me, here it is all over again! I told Meta my name is Bauer too!
Papa B: Libeling, it’s no time to think about yourself!
Bert: Oh, it’s all crazy!
Papa B: It’s time to set the table.  I’ll bring Michael down…
Bert: No, no Papa Bauer. How can anyone think of eating?
Papa B: Willie (Bill) should be home…
Bert: He should’ve been home an hour ago!

Watching it now I think “Geez Bert, it’s not all about you!”  Plus Bert looked so different, so young.  Her voice here was high and girlish while Bert’s voice when I saw her was mature and low.

The biggest fights Bert and Bill had been over his drinking. Bill Bauer was one of the first alcoholics shown on television, and he never could get completely sober. It led to him losing jobs, alienation between him and his sons, and affairs. In this scene, Ed (Robert Gentry) confronts Bert about an affair Bill is having.

Bert:  So I found out what happened between your father and Mrs. Scott.  And I don’t want that subject ever referred to in my presence again or your father’s because it’s my affair, not yours.  It’s my problem, not yours.
Ed:  You know I don’t get this. He turns his back on you and goes to another woman, treats you like you shouldn’t be treated. And instead of blaming him for breaking up the home, you blame me for breaking it up!
Bert:  I blame you for not being decent and loyal and loving enough to try and put this family back together again! You think you’re holier than he is! Well I just hope that when you’re his age, you’re half the man your father is.  Because he’s a big man, and you’re small.  It horrifies me to say it, but you’re so small.
Ed: You can stand there and tell me my father is a big man?
Bert: Yeah, because he’s a gentle man, and he’s a loving man and those are the only qualities that matter in this world.  And I look at you and I don’t see them, not the way you’re treating that man.  And if you stay the way you are, you’ll never be fit to shine his boots!

This is the Bert I know—the Bert who stood up for her family, who was so fierce. Okay, she was in absolute denial about Bill’s drinking, but no one was going to say anything about her husband, no sir. My grandmother was the same thing. She might be able to critique her family members but no one else could.

Both Bert and my grandmother tried to keep on going no matter what life threw with them.  After the doctors told my grandmother she was dying, she knew she had to stay alive for three things: My communion, my cousin Sericea’s graduation, and my mother’s graduation from college.  By God, she did, appreciating each event as a gift. When Charita Bauer had to have her leg amputated due to diabetes in 1984, the writers wrote it in the storyline that Bert lost a leg as well, which meant she had to learn to walk again with prosthesis. After a couple of steps, she counsels Josh Lewis (Robert Newman) who is learning to walk again after a car crash.

Bert: Josh!  Josh, it takes time!  Josh, we’re at the beginning! You’re at the beginning, so am I!  Look how far we’ve come already!  Don’t look at the distance left to go!
Josh: Don’t expect miracles, is that what you are saying?
Bert: No I’m not telling you that! Because life itself is a miracle, and don’t you ever forget it!

It’s so hard to watch this clip, because I know in four months Charita Bauer would be dead from complications of diabetes. She was sixty-three, just a year younger than Grandma was when Grandma died of lung cancer.

The show didn’t have Bert die right away. Instead, they waited a year, and had Bert die off camera. They had the funeral; I was okay emotional wise, yet irritated that it took them so long. Then they started showing clips of Bert through the years, and that was when I burst into tears. I was thirteen years old. My grandfather married again to a woman who was not warm or loving like my grandmother or Bert. I missed my grandmother so much it hurt, and Bert dying made me remember how much I missed my grandmother.

Yet Bert is always in my memory, just like my grandmother is. Sometimes I try and picture them in that warm yellow living room, talking about life in general, having a cup of coffee. They are laughing about something, and they look happy. I know Bert was a fictional character, yet I hope Grandma and Charita Bauer have met in Heaven. I hope Grandma said to her “Oh, you’re Bert! I watched you every afternoon.” I hope they’re happy.

In loving memory

Thora Peterson Cobb

1916-1980

Charita Bauer

1922-1985